


The One with the Napping

by Captain_Loki



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Crack, First Time, Fluff, Frottage, M/M, Napping, Post Season 2, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 14:07:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captain_Loki/pseuds/Captain_Loki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a unique and somewhat unhelpful talent, but Stiles can fall asleep anywhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One with the Napping

**Author's Note:**

> This kept getting schmoopier and schmoopier. I just wanted gratuitous fic where Stiles and Derek nap together, okay? so sue me. but don't. Cos all you'll get is a cat and a laptop that overheats.
> 
> also: this makes extremely vague references to bottom!derek, I am not going to tag it because it's vague enough that it would probably be disappointing to readers that want some really good bottom!derek and are searching that tag. But be warned if you are morally opposed to bottom!derek even the most vaguest of references of to his preferences maybe don't read? (I sass because I care :P)

Stiles thinks his super hero name would be Captain Sarcasm. The pack objects on several grounds and comes up with much less flattering ideas. The only one he'd ever agree is accurate is Derek's "Captain Narcolepsy".

That one is true.

It is  a unique and somewhat unhelpful talent, but Stiles can fall asleep anywhere. It isn't so much that Stiles is tired all the time, but when he runs himself into exhaustion he isn't too picky about where he curls up, or stretches out, or leans against.

He even falls asleep once with his eyes open. He isn't sure how, and he hasn't been able to do it again, which is unfortunate, as it would have solved almost all of his chemistry problems. It is slightly unnerving, if not also a little bit satisfying when he wakes to Derek's blotchy flushed face sputtering angrily at him.

"I've been talking to you for like...ten minutes, Stiles!"

"Sorry," Stiles yawns loudly, "what were you saying?" But Derek had already stalked out of the room in irritation.

                                                                       

                                                                                                            -----*-----*-----*-----

 

Stiles' favorite way to sleep, though, is flopped loose limbed in a patch of sunlight. The pack develops a habit of finding his prone body sprawled throughout the refinished Hale House, chasing lazily after the warm sun like a tired kitten.

His preferred spot though, is the window seat in Derek's bedroom. It's on the west side of the house and in the mid-afternoon the large room is bathed in a bright yellow glow. Derek, Stiles suspects, has a serious pillow addiction. How many throw pillows one twenty-four year old werewolf needed, was beyond him.

But Stiles isn't one to complain when it offers plenty of comfy cushions for nesting. He'd lay, stretching out his muscles, wiggling his bare toes in the warm light and making happy contented sighs, his arms thrown up above his head, t-shirt rucked up slightly, sun warming his belly and his face.

Derek always gives him this look like he's giving serious consideration to pushing open the large glass windows and defenestrating Stiles, but then he'd just roll his eyes at the goofy smile Stiles would offer and leave him alone, sitting in front of his computer until the sun, and Stiles, moved on.

 

                                                                                                            -----*-----*-----*-----

 

The weirdest place the pack finds Stiles is probably a toss up between up a tree in the woods behind his house, and sprawled half beneath his bed. The bed thing was purely accidental, an all nighter had been involved, he'd been looking for a shoe and taken a break. It happens.

The tree thing though, that was pretty embarrassing, actually. Stiles almost got away with his explanation about re-enacting Hunger Games for a fan fiction he was working on, because Stiles is just like that. But Derek had sniffed the air tentatively and said:

"It smells like dog." Stiles had tried to shrug in the most sardonic way possible, like that was fascinating news, when Derek quirked a brow. It was a look that said clearly deductions were being made. "Were you chased. Up a tree. By a dog?"

Stiles stalks back to his jeep while the pack bursts into mirthless fits of laughter behind him. Even Derek's face splits into a wide grin, shoulders shaking, dimples cut against his stubble. "Scruffy looking nerf herder," Stiles had scowled at him, which only served to make him laugh harder.

                                                           

                                                                                                            -----*-----*-----*-----

 

Stiles' survival skills seem to fly out the metaphorical window where his sleeping habits are concerned, too, because Stiles is known to take long naps in water. Not just baths either, which he does, but the shower too, dozing off while standing beneath the spray, until all the hot water has run out. (And getting between Erica and a hot shower is worse than any potential drowning scenarios Stiles can concoct if he is being honest).

He prefers the bath though, even if he doesn't actually take them that often. He's not sure how feels about stewing in his own filth, and he can't help but think how much more fun it'd be if there was someone else occupying the other side of Derek's large Jacuzzi.

"You could drown," Derek says offhandedly, the first time he finds Stiles. Stiles thinks its a mark of their growing relationship that he doesn't even bat an eye at finding the seventeen year-old naked in his personal on-suite. There are bubbles protecting his modesty. Not that Stiles has much of that, napping in the buff in another man's tub.

"I think I'd wake up." Derek grunts in response, which isn't actually a response, except it's Derek so it is. Stiles opens a bleary eye when he hears the clank of porcelain against porcelain and watches the slope of Derek's back as he pees. When he's done Derek lets the seat and the cover fall with a soft clunk and Stiles wonders if he does it on his own or if he's been conditioned by Erica...or maybe even Laura. He doesn't ask.

"Clean it when you're done," Derek tells him, washing his hands at the sink. He spares a quick glance at Stiles, submerged now to the lobes of his ears. Derek smacks a button on the side of the tub like it's going to eject Stiles, instead the jets burst into life.

"Whaoohyeah," Stiles makes a happy noise and twitches in surprise before he relaxes back against the tub. He gives Derek a sloppy thumbs up. "I was looking for that."

Stiles swears he catches the edge of a smirk before Derek slips out of the bathroom.

 

                                                                                                            -----*-----*-----*-----

 

Stiles also makes a habit of falling asleep on people, in the literal sense. He's not particularly bashful about it either, nor does he discriminate based on age, gender, or rank.

Except Peter.

Fuck Peter.

 It's terrible when they watch  movies. Scott, who is so used to playing human pillow at this stage in their friendship, laughs at the fights that break out to see who has to sit next to Stiles on movie nights.

Anything shown after nine PM and Stiles is done, it's inevitable, and the group all eyes him warily as they settle in.

Except Peter, and that one time that he slid next to Stiles on the couch and eyed him hungrily, which is infuriating because he's so attractive but in a definite "I'm going to make shoes out of you" kind of way, and when he smiles it's just wrong. So, Stiles was all fuck no, and ended up on the floor, which he wonders later if that was Peter's plan all along, because no one ever wants to sit with Peter so he ends up with the couch to himself.

Eventually though, they all kind of get used to it, and if pressed would admit it's not the worst thing in the world, and soon the only one who absolutely refuses to sit within ten feet of Stiles is Jackson, but that's old news by now.

The first time he ends up next to Derek it's on a night the girls have chosen some crappy rom-com. Stiles thinks about attempting to stay awake. But it's 10'o'clock. And it's Channing Tatum, who Stiles thinks is highly overrated.

And Stiles reasons, Derek knows him, so he figures what the hell when his eyes feel heavy and he just gives in. "I'll try not to drool? Kay?" He sleepily sighs out, before he lets his head collapse against Derek's shoulder.

He doesn't keep his promise because he wakes with his face plastered to Derek's chest in a cooling pool of his own spit. Derek's arm falls away from where it's draped around his shoulder as Stiles pulls himself into a sitting position, swiping at his wet mouth.

"Well, that's embarrassing," he says, but when he looks up, Derek is sound asleep and the room is dark and empty.

 

                                                                                                            -----*-----*-----*-----

           

The most uncomfortable place Stiles has fallen asleep, to date, would have to be the Beacon Hills Elementary School playground. He'd like to be able to claim he was in elementary school at the time, but no one Stiles tells this story to actually assumes that.

He does take comfort, though, in the fact that it wasn't even his idea, it was a bad group decision. Alcohol may have been involved.

Okay, copious amounts of alcohol had been involved, the kind laced with wolfsbane so the whole pack got in on the 'end up passed out drunk in public until your disgruntled Alpha comes to find you and drag your ass home' festivities.

Derek isn't really angry, though, mostly just the kind of irritated Stiles normally sees on him compounded with the annoyance of being their DD, and the fact that no one actually bothered to make him DD or tell him, so he ends up wandering around Beacon Hills at four in the morning wondering what the hell was wrong with his betas.

Apparently, intoxication messed with the pack mentality.

And while Derek isn't surprised they had indulged in a little youthful indescretion the night after graduation he tells them in clipped tones maybe next time they could all fall asleep pissed somewhere that wasn't frequented by the Beacon Hills deputies on patrol.

And while everyone else had the good sense to hunker down somewhere relatively normal for a school playground: curled up on the merry-go-round, puppy piled in the sandbox, tucked into the looking globe, Stiles' bed of choice is the crest atop the children's jungle gym.

To Stiles' inebriated mind, it had seemed like a perfect idea. He wakes to Derek's sunshiny face beneath him, shouting his name, and Stiles wobbles back and forth like an overturned turtle with no idea how to get down, let alone how he managed to get up there in the first place.

He's pretty impressed with drunk Stiles. Derek doesn't seem to share that sentiment. When his efforts prove fruitless he sighs and gives up, staring at Derek upside down, who raises his eyebrow in expectation. Stiles gives a half-hearted shrug.

"I can't feel my butt," which is not actually what he means to say, at all, and it makes him laugh, which hurts, his muscles stretched too tight.

"Stiles." Then Stiles is laughing hysterically, whimpering softly between fits, and so is Scott where Allison is propping him up beside Derek.

"You said butt," Scott says, sounding scandalized. "To the Alpha," and he too starts giggling. Derek looks like he pops a blood vessel or two rolling his eyes.

"I know! Look, he looks angry," Stiles says pointing with a shaky finger somewhere about two feet from where Derek is actually standing.

"Stiles, get down!" Stiles gives one last stitch effort to comply, wriggling hard, before he goes falling through one of the triangular shaped holes. It feels like the world is somersaulting around him and he lets out a shout.

"Oh God! Stop the world I wanna get off!" He flails, limbs too loose to hold on to the metal bars properly. "Derek! DEREK!" He shouts. But Derek is already scaling the metal structure and throwing Stiles easily over one of his shoulders and climbing back down.

"Whooaa!" Stiles shouts, like he's unsure how he got there. He tries to prop himself up as he's carried back to Derek's awaiting car. "Ooh. I can't feel mine but I can feel yours!" He sing-songs, before reaching out to grab two handfuls of Derek's denim clad ass.

"Buuuuutt," he whispers, before passing out.

Stiles only remembers bits and pieces of this in the morning and he looks at Derek scrutinizing over scrambled eggs at the crowded breakfast table.

"Did I touch your bu--" Stiles stops at the look on Derek's face.

Scott giggles over the strawberry jam.

 

                                                                                                            -----*-----*-----*-----

 

Some people snore, some people twitch, or kick or even sleep like the dead. Stiles? Stiles on the other hand narrates sci-fi epics in his sleep. He doesn't believe the pack when they tell him this. Because he knows he sleep talks, mumbling and incoherent...he assumes...and while they confirm, that yes, there's that too, there's also a week long period where Stiles is overcome with a persistent fever, holed up at the Hale House so he doesn't spread it to his whole dorm.

"We've started writing it down," Boyd tells him and when they show him the notebook pages filled with what he recognizes as Derek's neat slanting writing, he stares at them in complete disbelief.

"Bull shid," he sniffles. But Scott confirms it, and Erica asks if he'd ever consider undergoing any kind of sleep study, while Isaac expresses his disbelief that things like this are actually possible.

"I  mean, it's a decent story, and you literally pick up right where you left off the night before." Stiles decides it's time to lay of the Nyquil. But the story earns him a gift card to Starbucks in his freshman creative writing class.

 

                                                                                                            -----*-----*-----*-----

 

Self-preservation jokes aside, Stiles never actually falls asleep on a case, until the one time he does. But Stiles will argue that it isn't really his fault, not idiosyncratically anyway. He's supposed to be tailing one of Boyd's new neighbors who arrived with suspicious timing to a vengeful ghost thing. It's finals week and the workload has been kicking Stiles' ass, so he takes a few minutes from watching the quiet house to go over his notes for history.

He doesn't even remember dozing, but he wakes with a snap and the first thing he notices is that it's dark out. Not even in the evening is approaching kind of way but like, night, hello, is here. Stiles winces when his phone vibrates and sees that he has ten missed calls from Derek, which Stiles thinks is a bit excessive, if he's being honest.

Mr. Buckley's car is gone from the driveway.

"Fuuuuck," Stiles says, drawing out the syllable dramatically, "Derek is gonna be maaaad at me." He jumps a foot then when there's a tap-tap-tap on the glass beside his head. He refrains from screaming but reconsiders at the look on Derek's face as it looms out of the darkness.

He rolls down his window, barely opens his mouth before Derek says, "you fell asleep." It's not even a question.

"You can't just make assumptions like that!" Stiles argues, half-heartedly offended at the accusation.  "How do you know that I wasn't in mortal peril! There could have been kidnapping and harrowing escapes!" Stiles argues.

"Stiles--" Derek starts but his bitch face is softer than usual, mostly for posterity than conveying any real vehemence.

"What?"

"There's a post-it note stuck to your forehead," Derek says, sighing, reaching through the window and pulling the neon green paper from where it's clinging to his face.

"Right...of course, no I put that there...for safe keeping," Stiles argues, plucking the post-it out of Derek's fingers and letting it fall against his open notes.

"I'm sorry," he croons, guilty, then. "Did he kill people? Did he get killed? Did I miss the Apocalypse? Again?"

"You look like shit," Derek offers, ignoring him in favor of leveling this look Stiles rarely sees on people that aren't Scott or his father.

Like Derek is worried. Which is ridiculous, except then he's telling Stiles he should have said something if he wasn't up for a stakeout and then Stiles is trying to reassure him.

"It's just been a busy week," he confesses, which is true enough. Sophomore year seemed to be trying to one up the one he had in high school.

"Maybe you should rethink the dual major," Derek is saying. Stiles gives him this scrutinizing look because it comes tumbling out kinda fast like Derek has been wanting to say that for some time.

"I'll be alright," Stiles tells him, and then he yawns again, loudly, and his stomach takes that as an opportune time to growl like an angry kanima. "I need pizza and a 12 hour nap."

"C'mon, I'll buy," and Derek yanks the door to the jeep open, "then I'll drive you home, we can pick up the jeep tomorrow, too much paperwork involved with you dying asleep at the wheel. Cops would be involved, it'd be a whole thing."

"You're like a regular Prince Charming," Stiles informs him, but he complies without argument, and Derek actually slings his backpack over his own shoulder as they walk to the end of the block and Derek's dark Camaro.

Stiles isn't sure what to make of this, but he mulls it over while he drifts off in the surprisingly comfortable leather interior.

 

                                                                                                            -----*-----*-----*-----

 

At some point, the habitually falling asleep on people thing, turns into a habitually falling asleep on Derek thing. Stiles amuses himself often with the image of his sixteen-year-old self's face if he should ever master time travel to tell him this.

He's lost track of the casual occurrences but the more notable ones stay even if the details still have that hazy dream-like quality to them. Scott's nineteenth birthday, for example, at nearly two in the morning the festivities had officially drawn to a close, the pack milling about outside the twenty-four hour diner just down the street from the Bowling Alley they had spent the majority of their evening loitering at.

They're waiting for Isaac who's still in the bathroom, Stiles may be Captain Narcolepsy, but he wagers that definitely makes Isaac "Bladder the Size of an Ant's Man". They've left their cars at the bowling alley and intend to walk back. It isn't a long walk, but the cold air is making Stiles' fingertips feel pinched off and numb. He spares a thought for wishing he had a pair of gloves, or the jacket he usually stashes all of his extra pair of gloves in.

Lydia is shivering into Jackson, his arms wrapped around her tiny frame, Allison's head rests comfortably against Scott's shoulders, their hands clasped together. Boyd and Erica are fake sparring beside a streetlamp. Derek's hands are clamped in the pockets of his jeans as he stands on the side of the road. *Damn werewolves and their cold resistance.*

Stiles muses as he watches the steady rise and fall of Derek's shoulders that he's probably really warm, he's wearing his sweater instead of the leather jacket (which despite looking amazing is always freezing to the touch). Stiles moves forward, standing on the curb's edge and decides to test the theory as he collapses against Derek's back, sprawling across him, chin tucked into the crevice of his neck and shoulder. Stiles yawns loudly, eyes growing heavy as he lets them slipped closed.

Derek tenses slightly and leans forward in surprise and confusion, but he doesn't let Stiles fall to the ground, which is nice, Stiles thinks.

"You're warm," Stiles explains. "It's cold. I'm sleepy. I can't go on." Stiles says in rapid succession, he thinks he might be pouting, even.

"Kay, Cap," Derek says, but his voice is light, teasing. When the door opens and Isaac comes bustling out, Stiles makes to move away from the blissful warmth of Derek's body heat, but Derek crouches slightly and Stiles loses his balance, falling ungracefully across the broad expanse of Derek's back. Derek scoops him up easily and hefts him up further. Stiles lets out an indignant sort of sound.

He lets his arms drape around Derek's neck lazily as he's piggy backed down the street all the way to the bowling alley parking lot.

Stiles is asleep before they reach the Camaro.

 

                                                                                                               -----*-----*-----*-----

 

The first time Stiles more than accidentally falls asleep on Derek it's a Friday afternoon and Scott and Stiles' last class of the semester had been cancelled due to the fact that their sociology professor’s spawn had finally finished gestating. Stiles had lamented the poor planning as he and Scott could have driven back to Beacon Hills the night before.

He and Scott bicker good naturedly as Stiles unlocks the door to the Hale House. He kicks off his sneakers in the front hall and drops his backpack on the floor just inside the formal living room.

"Ooh!" Stiles lets out, when he spots Derek, who looks fast asleep on the couch. He can't be sure though, Derek's head is cradled on his arm, his face covered by an open magazine draped across it. He's wearing a grey wife beater and a pair of soft sweats, his bare feet resting on the opposite arm of the couch.

Scott is fixing Stiles with his "what the fuck face" probably because Stiles is eyeing Derek hungrily. But he reasons without guilt that its less 'ooh look at the rippling muscles (though he notices) and more "nap nap napnapnapnap!" (which he mumbles aloud) as he scuttles across the room like a deranged pokemon.

He wasn't kidding about the survival thing flying out the proverbial window in the face of a good snooze session, and Derek, Stiles has come to learn in the past few years, is a cuddler.

And Stiles fucking loves cuddles.

So, he disregards the obvious dangers in climbing atop a sleeping Alpha in favor of climbing atop a sleeping Alpha. He's not especially graceful about it either, all flailing limbs as he collapses across Derek's broad chest, nuzzling the underside of his jaw contentedly, trying to avoid crushing any bits.

Derek wiggles in surprise, grunts a "Stiles," more like a statement than an actual question and goes back to sleep. He doesn't even dislodge the magazine on his face.

They stay like that until the pack wakes them up for dinner three hours later. Stiles' hair is messy and he has lines from Derek's tank top imprinted on his face.

 

                                                                                                            -----*-----*-----*-----

 

It isn't until Stiles' junior year that his and Derek's Great Platonic Siesta Sessions end abruptly one lazy afternoon when Stiles wakes, rutting softly against Derek's thigh, raging hard on pressed tight against his jeans.

He can't remember what he'd been dreaming about before he woke, a little dazed. Upon taking in his surroundings he thinks, a little absently, that he should probably stop, but his pelvis wasn't getting the memo because he continues thrusting, sort of soft and lazy his dick throbbing. That's when he feels Derek stir beneath him, first in the way his whole body sort of wriggles and Stiles does stop then. He figures he's about to be bucked off like a drunk sorority girl on a mechanical bull.

But then Stiles feels another part of Derek stir, another part of Derek against Stiles' own thigh. Derek isn't stopping his wriggling, on the contrary he moves a little more surely and Stiles lets his hips do what they want. And then he and Derek are rutting against each other, hard, slow thrusts of their hips. Stiles shifts until he's got his arms braced on the curve of the couch's arm on either side of Derek's head.

They make eye contact, their noses almost brushing they're so close, mouths parted on quiet moans and heavy pants. It's easily the most intense experience of Stiles' life. Not that he admittedly has a whole lot to compare it to, but this? Is setting the bar unfairly high. Derek leans up like he knows what Stiles is thinking and then they're kissing. It takes only another few thrusts and Derek's teeth scraping along his lips before he's coming hot and messy in his jeans.

Derek's hands grope at Stiles' ass through too thick denim and then he's forcing Stiles over, switching their positions easily. Derek envelopes him completely as he humps Stiles with hard deliberate thrusts into the cushions of the couch. Stiles' legs fall open and bending to allow him better access. He's so hot, he wants to tear at the heavy sweatshirt he's wearing, shuck off his jeans so he can feel where Derek's cock is pressed just behind is balls, without the tight constricting denim between them.

He thinks he may have expressed some of this allowed in feverish moans because Derek lets out a wrecked sob around Stiles' name and then he's stilling as he comes. Stiles can feel his dick convulsing, even if it's not nearly enough. Derek thrusts a few more times in lazy rolls of his hips as he comes down, before he buries his face in the sweat slicked skin of Stiles' neck and holds on as though for dear life.

 

                                                                                                            -----*-----*-----*-----

 

For all that Derek teases Stiles for his sleeping habits, the werewolf is not without his own set of quirks. Stiles takes mental notes of them, catalogues them for future reference, blackmail, mirthless teasing, the unguarded truth of this thing that has crept in between them. Stiles has no preference when it comes to sides of the bed, has no preference when it comes to bed or no bed, to be honest. Derek prefers the right side of Stiles' tiny dorm bed, but the left side of his own, though Stiles first chalks it up to eccentric habit he realizes Derek favors whichever side of the bed is closest to the door.

When he points this observation out to Derek one night, while they're curled up together on the couch, he says in a teasing tone, "I'm hip to your jive, you'd just throw me to the bad guys so you can get way faster, I get it." But then Derek is flushing and not looking at him, his fingers twitching against Stiles' shoulder as he pulls him closer. And Stiles realizes with a low swooping sensation fluttering in his stomach, Derek prefers himself between Stiles and any points of entry. Stiles grins stupidly and kisses Derek's frown away.

 

                                                                                                             -----*-----*-----*-----

 

Derek sleeps naked and prefers to be the little spoon.

 

                                                                                                             ----*-----*-----*-----

 

Derek likes to fall asleep in the Jacuzzi, and Stiles has to recant his earlier statement that another person occupying the other side of the tub is preferential to being alone, because Derek Hale occupying the same side of the tub is preferential to any other kind of scenario that Stiles can concoct. Derek falls asleep with his back pressed against Stiles' chest, as Stiles kisses his way from Derek's fingers to the insides of his wrist.

 

                                                                                                              ----*-----*-----*-----

 

Derek falls asleep in bed eating snacks with alarming frequency. The first time Stiles catches him he lies about it, but Stiles swipes a finger through the chocolate smeared across the side of his face and points it accusingly at a similar pattern on the wall by the bed. Derek pouts for about an hour afterward and tries to blame it on the dog.

"We don't have a dog," Stiles points out.

"We have Scott."

"Fair point."

                                                                                                               ----*-----*-----*-----

 

Derek falls asleep immediately after sex. This is sometimes not even the slightest exaggeration, and more than once Stiles has expressed how fortunate it is that Derek prefers to bottom, having on occasion been out before Stiles actually is.

 

                                                                                                                ----*-----*-----*-----

 

Derek is vigilant even in slumber. When he and Stiles are caught in the middle of a potential battefield Stiles' senior year, forced to hide out in an abandoned warehouse, waiting for the rescue of the rest of the pack, Derek tells Stiles they'll take turns keeping watch, but Stiles knows Derek doesn't let himself sleep. Not until he has no choice, and his body finally succumbs, his head slumped against Stiles' shoulder, their fingers entwined tightly.

 

                                                                                                                 ----*-----*-----*-----

 

Derek's favorite spot to sleep is the same as Stiles'. Three months after Stiles graduates from college he finds Derek curled up in the sun there, head against the glass window and peering down into the yard below.

"That's my spot," Stiles points out. Derek nods.

"I know. It smells like you." He tells him, before grabbing Stiles' wrist and pulling him down onto his lap, curling himself around Stiles and holding him in a warm embrace.

 

                                                                                                                        ----*-----*-----*-----

 

Derek doesn't talk in his sleep, but Stiles does. The first time Stiles says "I love you" he's not even conscious for it. Derek gets quiet for a few days before Stiles confronts him about it, and Derek admits what he said. He asks, "Did you mean it?" nervously across the kitchen counter and Stiles smiles and says without hesitation,

"Yes. I love you."

"Me too."

Stiles doesn't tell him until years later that he was dreaming of Hostess cupcakes. But by then there's an imprint of Stiles' in a mattress that stopped being "Derek's", and a dresser with a wonky leg on the other side of the room filled with mostly flannel and graphic tees, a framed photograph of Derek with the Sheriff's arm slung not even slightly awkwardly around his shoulder, and the two matching silver bands on his and Derek's fingers.

Stiles figures, it's a safe confession.


End file.
